Started reading this fantastic book on the grim transport of Mozambican migrants to the mines and learnt something unexpected: Charles van Onselen worked underground in the 1960s as an onsetter (raising and lowering cages and skips in shafts).
#mininghistory
I chaired a talk by van Onselen on the book earlier this year and he used this inhuman system of transportation to make an argument about moral judgement in history and the critique made of judging historical actors by contemporary standards.
He argued that we don't need to rely on present-day attitudes to show that the conditions on these trains were brutal and cruel. People in charge of the system of labour migration from Mozambique to the Rand in the early c20th knew it was morally wrong.
We can know that they knew it was wrong because the trains traveled at night, so the conditions in which Mozambicans were transported were hidden.
Still reading van Onselen's 'The Night Trains' and some of the details are staggering. Mozambican migrant were transported to the mines in cattle trucks and open coal cars in freezing winters. Unknown numbers died en route.
#mininghistory
Trains carrying these migrants were designated as freight trains by South African Railways for the purposes of railway management, and their passengers effectively deemed to be cargo.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.